Fires of Ragnarok
by tankdrop24
Summary: In the depths of space, a group of unlikely individuals struggle to survive... EPISODE 1: Discovery! When they find themselves in paradise, a few desperate fighters must ask themselves, should they stay? When faced with mythic beings, a group of friends must question the nature of their world. And should both be asking: What comes next? Major Xovers includes Halo, RvB, MLP, MSG


Fires Of Ragnarok

Arc 1: Flashpoints

Episode 1: The Unicorn and The Witch, Part 1

The Deployment Pod shook as it hit the planet's atmosphere.

The pilots of the Mobile Suits inside offered quiet prayer as they streaked toward the planet's surface at hyper-sonic speed. Around them, the sky exploded as some of the other pods were hit by long range weapons. It was unfortunate that there would be losses so early in the attack, but no matter how many pods were shot down, enough forces would remain that the defenders of the world below would not have hope of victory.

Just before the Mobile Suits were to deploy, the force's commander broadcast a message to his troops.

"Attention to all warriors descending onto the cursed world below us: Remember your vows, of brotherhood and valor, of purity and righteousness. We men of Sanghelios are the god's cleansing blade, come to protect the virtuous and destroy the Sinful. The filth below don't stand a chance against our Covenant's Holy will."

With his word, the pods slowed to subsonic speeds, and split open, revealing the man-shaped war machines within.

The planet's population was doomed...

* * *

"Hey honey, can you come take a look at this?"

Twilight Velvet looked up from her desk, which was covered in photographic plates, each one showing a picture of a star field. Her husband, Night Light, levitated a similar plate over to her. Velvet grabbed it with both hooves, and began closely examining the plate.

Plates capable of creating images this clear were new to Equestria. If the plate had been an older one, the strange, thin purple line on the plate would not be visible.

"Whatever this thing is, it's moving faster than anything we've ever photographed before."

"I exposed the plate for only eight seconds, during which whatever this thing is, managed to cross the telescope's field of view." Night Light observed.

In their respective careers as astronomers, the pair had never seen anything like the phenomena they had observed the past week.

"Alright, I'm stumped." Velvet admitted. "It looks like we'll have to use Twiley."

"We're resorting to blood ties already?" Night Light complained.

"Oh come on Lighty, it's probably just something that new Night princess cooked up, nothing to get all worked up about."

* * *

Following the devastating Krogan Rebellions, a new order emerged in the the form of two rival factions: The Orion's Arm - Armed Coalition Treaty (O-ACT), formed around the alliance between star nations like the Asari Republics, The Vulcan Federation, The Palaven Hierarchy, and the Earth Sphere Federation,to oppose the juggernaut that was the Covenant Empire.

After a period of reluctant reform, the Covenant formed an organization of it's own, the Reclamation Star Alliance.

For over a hundred years, the two factions were content with maintaining an uneasy peace, but all that changed when a skirmish over Harvest, a world on the edge of Earth Sphere Federation Space, escalated into a full fledged armed conflict.

Several tactical blunders by the O-ACT, combined with the Covenant's technological superiority gave the RSA Forces a significant advantage over the Federation, forcing them to spend most of the war on the retreat, losing the majority of their Colonies.

It is Center Year 0395, and the Earth Sphere Federation is on the verge of defeat...

* * *

Thirty years of service, and this is where it ends, thought Gunnery Sergeant Edward Buck.

Three days ago, he and the rest of his unit of Helljumpers had dropped onto the rocky plateaus of Nomisia 654 for a force reconnaissance mission. At the time, Buck and his comrades had been under the impression that they would been extracted after a few hours, but it had turned out that the RSA forces had more air support then expected.

Now it was a week later, what remained of his unit were holed up in a tiny outpost, waiting for the end.

The outpost, a square, tattered structure, re-purposed from an abandoned Militia armory, had only a small generator powering an near broken air conditioning system, a small detection apparatus that sensed vibration in the ground, and the outpost's communication system, still fully functional, yet unable to get past interference to reach any remaining ships in high orbit.

The Helljumper's small refuge was surrounded on all sides by an almost endless, dreary brown waste land. The land had been a desert before the invasion, but the scarring from missed shots fired by ships in orbit had made what was once a somewhat thriving ecosystem into what could best be described as nothing, at worst, a form of hell.

The sky above them was hardly better, the Emerald Green majesty that had once been the pride of Tourism adverts all across Federation space was now filled with brown dust kicked up into the air by an attempt at nuking enemy forces that had been landing on the southern Continent. Even in daylight, it was possible to see falling stars streak through the sky, debris from the battle above.

The only details of note in the landscape that were closer than the mountains visible on the horizon were the comm tower, ironically the most intact part of the outpost, a tough dirt road that had somehow survived the fighting, and a crater made by some orbital wreckage crashing into the ground.

"Hey, Boss, the building's ground sensor is picking up something big approaching, probably a convoy." Informed Kojo 'Romeo' Agu, the Unit's last remaining sniper.

From up on the small observation deck on the roof of the outpost, both Buck and Romeo had a decent view of the surrounding area of rocky hills. Just coming over a hill, on the dirt road , Buck could make out the silhouettes of several approaching vehicles.

"What have we got?" Buck asked Romeo, who at once began scanning the approaching enemy force with the scope of his sniper rifle.

"Looks like a group of traitors, three APCs and a couple of light tanks."

Traitors. Buck knew that that could only mean one thing, they were fighting soldiers from the Principality of Zeon, a nation formed from human separatists hundreds of years ago that had joined the Covenant's sphere of influence.

Zeon's foot soldiers were much less advanced than their Covenant counterparts, which meant that Buck and his Helljumpers would have less of an uphill battle ahead of them, but any of the precious ammunition for their heavy weapons that they used in this battle would mean less available ammunition in their inevitable next confrontation with Covenant forces.

"We'll continue our trap as planned. Let's just hope command realizes we're still alive and decides to send a bird before we have to take on the Covies."

Outside, hiding behind a large boulder, an Helljumper wearing the Armor of an explosives expert observed the approaching Zeon convoy.

"Looks like we got two Eins tanks escorting three Garoots." The Helljumper, Private First Class Micheal 'Mickey' Crespo, reported.

"No shit, son" The larger soldier hiding next to Mickey, Corporal Taylor 'Dutch' Miles commented. "I hope you brought enough explosives for all of them."

Mickey chuckled.

"Hey man, I want to you and the others a chance to shine as well."

"Son, I'd prefer a chance to come home alive."

Dutch shouldered his M41 Rocket Launcher and took aim at the Eins tank at the back of the convoy. Dutch had loaded the launcher with an anti-tank rocket equipped with a powerful shaped charge warhead. It lacked any sort of guidance however, so Dutch would have to aim with care.

"Blow the explosives when lead tank passes over them. I'll take out the rear one. We'll trap those Zeeks in between the wrecks." Dutch explained his plan to Mickey.

"Roger"

Dutch had been a Infantryman for longer then even Sgt. Buck, while Mickey was still new to the job. Even worse, Mickey had been trained to know the enemy as dots on a screen than up close and personal; He had originally tried joined the Earth Sphere Federation Marines as a Pelican Dropship pilot, but when the world he had been trained on was attacked, the local forces had only a limited number of craft, and Mickey hadn't made the cut, and was pressed into service as a regular Marine. He managed to survive the battle, and did well enough to join the ODSTs after.

Mickey primed the detonator for the charges he had placed along the dirt road the Zeon vehicles were traveling over. When he had joined the ODSTs, his trainers had noted that he had a knack for explosives, a talent he had put to good use on the battlefield ever since.

The seconds ticked by as the enemy convoy drove towards the spot where Mickey had placed the explosive charges. Thick beads of sweat were dripping down the Helljumpers' faces as the time for the ambush came closer and closer. The shapes of the enemy vehicles became larger and larger, eventually becoming big enough to discern details.

The Vehicles were painted the usual lime green colors most Zeon vehicles possessed, and had curved armor, disturbingly similar to the types used by their Covenant allies. More disturbingly, Mickey could see that the lead tank had several soldiers riding on it.

When he had been recruited into the ODSTs, Mickey had assumed that the enemy he would be fighting was an alien one. He didn't fully realize the implications of the Covenant having human allies, even if he had access to the information. This was going to be the first time Mickey would have to kill other humans in battle.

Despite that, he readied himself for the inevitable, even as his body was wrought by nervous shaking. Even if he had been trained to fight Humans, killing someone of your own kind for the first time was no easy task. Still, it was them or Mickey's comrades, and he knew who he would pick.

In contrast to Mickey, Dutch was remaining calm, serene even. He had joined the Federation forces before the outbreak of the war twenty-five years ago, during the Insurrection. He knew what it was like to kill other humans, he had almost as much experience in that as the rest of the Squad combine, not counting Romeo and Buck.

With clouds of doubt still lingering in his mind, Mickey noticed that the lead Eins Tank was about to cross over the explosives. Ignoring his fear, he slammed his thumb down on the detonator. Mickey cringed as the lead tank was caught in an explosion, destroying the Tank and reducing the soldiers riding on it to a fine, red mist.

As the other Zeon vehicles in the convoy swerved to avoid the tank's wreck, gunfire erupted from the outpost. The Gauss Machine Guns of the Zeon Garoot APCs rattled as the armored vehicles laid down suppressing fire as their occupants disembarked. The remaining Eins tank's cannon fired a singled round into the outpost, knocking down a wall.

A pair of friendly IDs winked out of existence on Mickey and Dutch's Tactical Displays. The two understood one thing, if their unit was going to survive, that tank needed to die.

"Dutch, how long is it going to take you to line up a shot on that thing?"

Dutch barley acknowledged Mickey.

"Keep your helmet on, boy. We've only got a couple of rockets for the launcher."

The rocket launcher Dutch was using, the M41, had two barrels, both loaded currently with unguided anti-tank rockets. If Dutch could land so much as a glancing hit on the tank, he could knock it out of the battle.

"Here goes nothing." Dutch muttered under his breath as he let loose a rocket.

He felt his shoulder shake against the push of the rocket's back blast. The small dart of metal and explosives zoomed towards the enemy tank, but at the second before impact, the tank's active countermeasures fired, detonating the rocket's warhead before it could hit the tank.

"Dammit." Dutch cursed under his breath.

The two's disappointment soon gave way to fear, as the tank's turret began to turn towards two.

"Fuck it. Kid, run!"

Dutch grabbed Mickey's arm and began running. Seconds later, both Mickey and Dutch were knocked to the ground by the blast of a high explosive tank shell. Looking over his shoulder, Mickey could see the Eins tank looming over them like some massive mechanical predator poised to land a killing blow.

Looking around them, things weren't much better for the rest of the Helljumpers. They were down to five soldiers... Including Mickey and Dutch. The Helljumpers that weren't about to die via Tank were cornered in the outpost. With that Eins tank, the Zeon troops could just blow apart the outpost without having to worry about close combat.

Mickey's life flashed before his eyes.

His memories of playing with his mom, dad, and sister in Von Braun city's underground tunnels on Luna danced before his eyes. His first breakup, graduation from High School, and enlistment in the ESF Marines. It was all clear to him now. He was about to die.

Dutch, laying somewhere a few meters from Mickey, hadn't given up hope yet. Sure he was in one hell of a bad position, being highly exposed to a tank that was more or less immune to whatever Dutch had, but he could still do one thing: pray. A soldier who had survived this war as long as Dutch would have experienced a borderline miracle once to still be alive. At least, that made sense to the logic of someone still stunned from having been close to an explosion.

Whatever the case, it would take a miracle for the remaining Helljumpers to have any chance of survival at all.

* * *

Running over the scorched land of the damned world, she payed it no mind, for she knew from experience that this world was beyond saving. There was only one thing of value left on this barren rock: A way off of it.

If she remembered correctly, there was likely to be a some soldiers at a nearby outpost.

As she drew near, she noticed columns of smoke rising from just beyond the horizon. This wasn't good, if the soldiers at the outpost were killed, that would be the end of her last way off this world.

Though she didn't let her body express it, a wave of relief washed over her when she cleared a hill overlooking the outpost. The forces attacking the outpost were only humans.

This would be easy.

Step one, pick off enemies outlying from the main formation. She drew a Rifle, an Army issue M395 DMR, to be specific, and took aim at the six targets valid for this part of the plan. She pulled the trigger six, no five times. Two of the enemy were close enough to be hit by one bullet. The enemy APCs were easily eliminated with an M41 RPG Launcher.

Step two, clear a path to the enemy armored vehicle. A shotgun, Marine M90, was going to be the optimal tool for this. While the hostiles were still undergoing the realization that six of their number had been eliminated, she was had cleared a path through their group.

Step three, disable or destroy the enemy Light Tanks. This one was simple. The ZLT-0080 Eins was known to have a spot of weak armor right under the ammunition storage in the rear. A single Anti-Tank Grenade in that spot and the entire Turret was gone, with the crew likely dead or incapacitated as well.

The final step of the plan, Step four, mop up, was almost a separate plan unto itself.

First, she had to retreat through the path she had cleared before to reach a better position from which to carry out the rest of the plan.

Next she would need the right tool for the job, the M739 Squad Automatic Weapon, in this case. A clunky, inaccurate weapon, but in the hands of someone with a good grip, and time to aim, it could be quite deadly.

By now the enemy forces were beginning to take note of their losses, so she would have to finish them off quickly. The last step of the engagement plan was to circle around the enemy formation, and pick them off with a series of three to five round bursts. From her perspective, it would take three minutes.

As the last bullet in the Machine Gun's ammunition drum left it's barrel, the last enemy soldier dropped as well.

All and all, she had eliminated between twenty-five and thirty hostiles total, lives that probably would have not lasted much longer in this war anyway.

All in all, a perfect engagement.

Almost perfect, anyway. One soldier managed to survive a Machine Gun round to the stomach long enough to fire off a retaliatory shot at her, coming relatively close to her head, but ultimately doing nothing more than send strands of her hair flying.

Before she could correct this mistake, one of the remaining ESF soldiers mowed the dying enemy down.

Even with that minor hiccup, this battle had turned out like most of it's type, utterly forgettable and irrelevant.

Turing to look at the soldiers she had saved, she could already sense a mix of awe, shock, and disbelief from the looks on their faces. If those soldiers had any preconceived notions of the nature of the universe, they were shattered now.

Putting a heroic facade on her face, Homura Akemi walked towards the still stunned men and women.

* * *

When Dutch had thought about praying, he didn't think God would respond so... Decisively.

The battle that the remaining Helljumpers were sure to lose had turned around in seconds when Zeon soldiers started dropping like flies.

The rest of the battle had taken less than half a minute at most. Dutch hadn't gotten a good look at the squad's savior, but who ever it was had to be powerful, a Spartan at the very least.

Ever since the ESF had revealed the existence of those super soldiers, many Helljumpers, Dutch included, had always been suspicious of them, especially after a rumored incident on the Olympus. They just seemed to good to be true, beyond what normal humans were capable of?

That just wasn't possible.

But this? What just happened here was beyond even the wildest rumors of what the Spartans are capable of, save for memetic 'facts' traded around Online forums by people with far too much time on their hands.

Dutch helped Mickey to his feet.

"Thanks, man. What saved us?"

Dutch shrugged.

"I dunno." He said, doing his best to keep his voice neutral.

Dutch looked over his shoulder to see Sergeant Buck standing in front of someone who was speaking with him. Between all the dust kicked up during the battle with the Zeon soldiers, and the world's rapidly setting blue sun, Dutch couldn't get a good look at whoever Buck was talking to.

As Dutch, Micky, and the rest of their squad mates approached Buck to get a better look at what saved them, it could not be measured in mere numbers how far their jaws dropped.

What have saved them appeared to be a teenage girl no older than fifteen.

She was Asian, her dark, raven hair framing a short, flat face. Her purple irises stared into Buck's. The closest thing he could approximate the girl's eyes to were those of a hardened veteran's, but Dutch couldn't say he had seen anyone with eyes as dull and shell shocked as the girl's, not even when he looked into a mirror.

She was wearing what looked like some kind of strange, purple and white dress, complete with stockings and a Mini-Skirt. On the girl's right hand, Dutch spotted an strange piece of jewelry, a Purple Gem resting in a Golden fixture that was clinging to the girl's hand by some unknown means. It could have been because of the poor lighting, but Dutch could swear he saw a shadow of some kind clinging to the Gem.

The whole outfit looked like nothing you would want to go near a battlefield in.

Dutch could even see small bleeding wounds from must have been shrapnel, but the girl seemed to be paying them no mind.

The girl's features combined to create a very surreal appearance, especially when juxtaposed against the battlefield she was standing in.

Buck called his soldiers to his side.

"This- young girl, is Homura Akemi. She's apparently some kind of special forces, or at least had access to the proper codes to claim to be one." Buck explain in a voice filled with as much disbelief as his subordinates were feeling.

Mickey walked forward, hand outstretched.

"Nice to meet you, thanks for saving us."

The strange girl ignored Mickey.

"I believe your squad posses a communications device capable of reaching craft in orbit, correct?"

Buck shrugged, gesturing towards the comm tower, which had become the only part of the outpost still left standing.

"Just barely, but the Fleet's retreated beyond what we can reach clearly, so good luck getting a signal through to them."

"Could you please give it to me?" Homura asked?

Shrugging, Buck reached into his pack and handed Homura an uplink to the Comm Tower's systems. It looked like most devices of it's kind had for centuries, a small ceramic box with a small screen, a keypad, and a set of a microphone and speakers on one side, near a long, extendable antennae on it's top.

Homura took the uplink and began punching in numbers and letters for some frequency.

"Who are you calling?" Mickey questioned. "All of our ships in orbit are gone, and I don't think anyone else one this world is going to be able to help us."

Homura continued to ignore Mickey, instead pressing the radio up against her head so she could speak into it.

"Bleak Predictions Actual, this is Yaga 67, I'm stranded at an a outpost on the world's smaller landmass on the day side and need pick up. Be aware, I am being accompanied by a group of surviving Orbital Drop Shock Troopers."

"Roger that, pick up en route. ETA, seventy minutes." The radio replied in a filtered, artificial voice, that reminded the Helljumpers far too much of intelligence spooks.

An hour later, that feeling of unease would be confirmed when the extraction vehicle arrived, it was an Pelican stealth variant likely to belong to the infamous Office of Naval Intelligence.

Whatever Buck and his men had stumbled into, they would be lucky to get out of this with their minds intact, let alone their bodies.

* * *

In the magical land of Equestria, a new day was dawning.

Princess Celestia, the ruler if the land, and the one who controlled the sun, gently raised the sun, creating a vivid and colorful sunrise that cast long shadows across the land and wowed early rising ponies.

Ironically, one of the ponies to miss this fantastic display, was Celestia's most faithful, the lavender unicorn named Twilight Sparkle.

When the first rays of dawn light poured through the crack in the library windows' curtains, the unicorn's face was buried inside the book she had spent almost the entirety of last night reading.

She would remain asleep for a couple hours past dawn, until the door to her study was opened by Twilight's most loyal companion and assistant, the baby dragon Spike.

He gently shook Twilight's purple mane.

"Come on, Twi, you got to wake up."

"No, Princess, can't I look at my books for just a little while longer?" Twilight murmured, still not fully conscious.

"Come on Twilight, isn't today the day you're supposed to make your new checklist for the week?"

Upon hearing her number one assistant's words, any notion of sleep left Twilight's body. She scrambled out of bed, using her telekinesis to throw her blanket to the floor. She would have to make picking up and cleaning it item number two on her checklist.

After spending an hour making her schedule for the next week, then spending another fifteen minutes triple checking the list to make sure nothing was left out, and that it left with adequate free time for her friends, Twilight and Spike began fixing themselves breakfast.

Twilight used her magic to make herself a sandwich from a couple slices of bread, some butter, and a few delicious fresh picked flowers from the window box. Spike got himself a couple of lumps of volcanic rock, nowhere near as tasty a breakfast as some proper gemstones, but it would be passable nonetheless.

As they ate breakfast at their small table, Spike realized that while he had been listening to Twilight going back and forth on whether Sweet Apple Acres Farm or Sugar Cube Corner was a more appropriate studying environment, Spike had forgotten to tell Twilight something important.

"Twilight!" Spike mumbled with his mouth full, spilling bits of volcanic rock onto her sandwich to her irritation. "This morning I was woken up by a letter."

As Twilight's assistant, Spike had been enchanted from a young age to use his dragon's breath to teleport letters and other messages across vast distances. For the past couple of years, Twilight had been using her dragon's ability to send letters to her mentor, Celestia, detailing what Twilight had been learning about the magic of friendship, but she had rarely ever received a response. Usually, a letter arriving meant something was amiss, and Twilight would have to gather her friends...

"Who is it from?" Twilight asked, trying to keep the nervousness in her voice to a minimum. The last time she had received a letter like this, she had been asked to face a test, and a foe like none she had faced before. If this letter was from the Princess, then who knows what threat Twilight would tasked with thwarting?

"Your parents." Spike answered.

At once, the tenseness left Twilight's body. Twilight remembered that she had taught her mother the spell to send letters to Spike the last time she had visited her. Come to think of it, Twilight had not seen or heard anything from her parents since her brother's wedding. It would be nice to hear from them again.

At once, she grasped the letter with her telekinesis and scanned it's text.

She recognized her mother's writing, intricate and neat, much like her daughter.

Her eyes were drawn to a small diagram below the letter's text. It appeared to be displaying a flat purple shape, that almost resembled the three sectioned body of an insect. The diagram was labeled 'Unknown Night Sky Object".

Twilight digested the letter's information in seconds. For the past couple of months, Twilight's parents, two of the most well-known astronomers in all of Equestria, had been observing objects like the one depicted in the diagram.

They all behaved similarly, moving in one direction at an extreme speed for a few minutes before vanishing under the horizon. On rare occasions, a few of the objects would be spotted suddenly gaining impossible amounts of speed and vanishing further into the night sky.

Sometimes, the phenomena were accompanied by a secondary phenomena, small pinpricks of light that would appear to enter and exit the objects, like fleas leaping on to and off of some great beast. These smaller objects were both too small and moved too fast to track effectively.

Twilight's parents had few ideas of the nature and purpose of these objects. They might be new constructs created by the newly returned Princess Luna to enhance her nightly display, though this seemed questionable, as it seemed unlike Luna to put so much effort into something that was so hard to see.

Twilight's father Night Light thought that these objects were a means of Princess Luna to encourage astronomy, and appreciation of the night sky among Equestria's populace. That seemed a bit unlikely to Twilight, as she had heard from Princess Celestia that Luna was trying to focus more on her subject's dreams, in order to get closer to them.

Twilight's mother, Twilight Velvet, theorized that these objects originated from outside the observable universe. They were, perhaps a strange natural phenomena, or some humongous living creatures capable of surviving the ether of the Night Sky. Velvet had even for a moment entertained the idea that these objects could be the craft of some foreign race, though both she and her daughter, after reading the notes in the letter, agreed that that seemed a bit unlikely, as no other nation had such ability, and not even Twilight, in all her knowledge of the science of Magic, had any idea how one would reliably move across the vast distances of the night sky, let alone between universes.

At the end of the letter, Twilight's parents admitted that they had sent this letter because they had wanted Twilight to use her influence to ask the Princess of the Night if she knew anything about these objects. They probably wanted her just to send a letter, but Twilight had something better in mind.

"Spike, clear my checklist and start packing our bags. We're going to Canterlot!"

"Really Twi? Are we going to visit your parents? We haven't seen them in ages." Spike was hopping up and down with excitement. Twilight grinned at her dragon assistant.

"Not just that Spike, but we're going to solve a mystery of the cosmos." Twilight started to leave the library.

"You get ready here Spike, I'll go ask around, and see if any of our friends want to come."

"Okay!" Spike said enthusiastically. Perhaps he could use this trip to finally make a romantic move on his beloved Rarity.

"When I get back, we'll write a letter back to mom and dad telling them we're coming to Canterlot." Twilight said from the doorway.

"It'll be nice to go there, and not have to save the world from disaster, or some villain, for once." Spike added, unaware of how fate loves a challenge.

"Indeed it will be." And with that, Twilight was gone, off on another adventure in her day to day life.

Before Spike could start packing his bags, he spat up another letter. This one had the royal seal of Princess Celestia. Without a moments hesitation, Spike opened the letter and read it aloud. The second he did, his heart turned to ice. Why did he have to have such a big mouth?

"Twilight, gather the Elements and come to Canterlot at once. This is an emergency..."


End file.
